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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Garthanos" data-source="post: 5151354" data-attributes="member: 82504">cat scratches in real life... nope... never heard of it having those effects even once... an incomplete litmas test does this critter do enough damage to even call it a a hit point.basically I have seen people run from cats because of the stress ... of the being hissedat and not wanting scratched.One cant model emotional distress with hit point loss in 3e... even if that is exactly how you might model it if severe enough in 1e, 2e and 4e.In 4e I probably wouldnt go with auto damage but I wouldn't feel limited in my monster design by "the rules" especially not in that way.  I might actually do something weirder hit point damage on the cats would come off of the cat lady.....scratch that they have a group hit pointsand she is minion class if you defeat the cats you have done enough damage that they run off.. she will indeed swoon but will be nicely availablefor roleplaying opportunity.. if you attack her directly she just dies and you still have the cats to deal with.limiting your grouping of creatures whose attacks are treated as one clump to just 300 + that rule doesnt seem to serve your game play. I thought that was obvious I was recommending using swarming as your take off point but you are house ruling anyway so you shouldnt treat it as "the rules". Some of the 4e batch of cats attacks might be "cloud of tooth and nails" and be auto damage like your swarm rules suggest. I am considering it... you have actually inspired me with this discussion... there will also be one "cats all run under foot" where some of the cats do basically trip attacks... they would be like a solo creature andl get multiple actions.  I might make some attacks against relfex instead of against armor class. Because I think I agree auto damage might be too much.You have two things going on.. extra hit points so that each one means a little less is very simple.... but the other treating each cat as a distinct individual... lets see 3 dozen cats with 3 attacks each and most of them have no chance of doing damage..except on a crit? I must be missing something.4e never had to fix presenting a single house cat as a combatant capable of taking down a human.(it doesnt have cat stats for a natural cat just a familiar)... so not sure what you are refering to.... and recomputing the combat capabilities of every animal sounds like the rule you were presenting ... along side rolling dice even for ones that arent really combat worthy? ummm yeah lets go look up the rule for handling this little non combatant *size mod for lethal damage ... when it really should just be left as a flavor element.  I guess pre stating all creatures to include there sizes modifiers in there combat values wouldn't add to complexity and would indeed be mostly newbie friendly. In general if attacking as a batch makes them in to combat worthy elements then I dont think there is any reason to have them statted up a a single combatant D2 -4 damage ummm no thanks. Note that doesnt mean I dont want stats like does this cat act like a typical cat or does it come every time its called... what color is this cat and does it have a favorite pet human and does it have distinguishing characteristics for roleplay ... it just means the combat stats are really pointless and so much less useful than roleplaying cues might be. I think we have gone way off thread of the concept of character designs D&D doesnt do well or your variant branch probably cant do well ;-) thanks for the diversion any way.</blockquote>

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